Global Recipe Project

Since it was a high of 107 today and I spent the better part of the afternoon in the pool, I wasn't super thrilled about having a ridiculously carb-heavy meal of cepelinai. Oh well. Cepelinai are potato dumplings filled with ground pork, beef or veal. They are then drowned in a bacon, sour cream sauce. Hearty. Although all the recipes I found called for "grated potatoes" this is a lie. If you grate potatoes then you will get fine angel-hair like strands of potatoes and they will not mix well and when boiled will fall apart. Instead, you need to pulverize the potatoes. Ingredients:        Dumpling Mixture: 4 lbs Idaho potatoes, peeled and finely grated pulverized 1 lb Idaho potatoes, peeled, boiled and riced 1 teaspoon salt, more or less to taste            Meat Mixture: 1 pound ground pork or 1/3 pound pork, 1/3 pound beef, 1/3 pound veal 1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped 1 teas...

The traditional dishes I could find for Kazakhstan almost always call for horse meat.  I didn't have any.  I also didn't know where I could find any. So, instead I opted for another dish quite popular in Central Asia--the dumpling. Tonight was manty with mint sauce. Although my recipe source was not completely authentic, I checked it back with multiple other manty (manti) sources and they were all similar.  The recipe I followed was from Food.com . However, I cut the salt quantity in half and used fresh mint. Of all the dishes I've made so far, this one by far brings the biggest smile to my face.  Although time consuming, it was a completely satisfying experience. Making dough, preparing filling and then steaming the final product was all very creative and somewhat therapeutic. I had some leftover dough in the freezer from Russian night and thus made some Kazakh Pierogis.  They were amazing. Additionally, that mint sauce is so simple and versatile. I for...